Last week, a friend mentioned that they were seeing posts on Twitter encouraging folks to nominate me for Best Fan Artist, based on the cover poses I’ve done.

I wasn’t expecting that. Thank you so much. It means a great deal to see how much people appreciate the whole cover pose project.

But I’m conflicted. The cover pics certainly seem to qualify as fan art, and they were done in 2012, so to my mind this would be a perfectly valid nomination. And I’ve got to say, winning a Hugo last year was amazing. It was one of the best moments of my life, and something I’d love to do again someday.

At the same time, even though the Hugo I received in Chicago was technically for my blog work in 2011, I’d be deluding myself to think the popularity of the cover poses wasn’t a factor. Accepting a nomination for Fan Artist would feel like I was trying to cash in twice for the same project.

Basically, the idea makes me uncomfortable. I won’t tell you who to nominate, but I will say that in the unlikely chance that I made the ballot for Best Fan Artist, I would decline the nomination.

Of course, if you wanted to nominate Libriomancer for Best Novel, that would be awesome and I’d love you forever. But when it comes to Best Fan Artist, it just doesn’t feel right. You honored me last year for my fan writing, and I can’t thank you enough for that. But there are are too many skilled, hard-working artists who deserve to be on that ballot this year.

In fact, if you have any thoughts on who should get a nod for Best Fan Artist or Writer this year, please share names and links in the comments.

Seconding Andrew’s recommendation of Mark Oshiro for Fan Writer! I’ve written up a recommendation post to explain why. I think he’s bringing something special and fun to SFF fandom, especially to the authors of the works he covers, who get an inside look at a reader’s perspective.

Didn’t Langford get the Hugo many years in a row for writing Ansible? So I’m not sure why getting more than one for more of the same thing is a problem? (Not knocking Langford or Ansible, it’s great fun every month) And it’s not like you didn’t deserve the Fan Hugo for other postings than just the poses.

I struggle wrapping my head around it. You may be one of the most popular choices for a category of a popularity contest. Declining a nomination seems to undermine the point of having a popularity contest. If the most popular people refuse to participate, what does the popularity contest accomplish?

It may be conceivable that some people vote for books on merit, but given past results, typically a popular author with a mediocre book will win over an unknown author with a good book. It is a popularity contest for all you might want it to be otherwise. Some people prefer that over the Nebulas. Some people prefer the Nebulas over the Hugos. You seem to be applying the standards of the Nebulas to the Hugos, which is confusing.